Last year, talking with a big guy in a big company, he showed me their offices. “Look at all the meetings,” he said. “They’re working hard.” As a consultant now, I’m always curious and put into test what I’ve learned the hard way through the years. And let me tell you some data. Studies show that the average employee is only truly productive for about 60% of the workday. In office jobs that translates to roughly 2 hours and 53 minutes of focused work out of 8 hours. Same hours. Much less real...
1 day ago • 1 min read
Too many products. Too many versions. Too much confusion. And the CEO comes back. He walks into a product meeting. Engineers proud. Slides prepared. Roadmaps built. He listens. And listens. And listens. Then he walks to the whiteboard. Draws a simple 2x2 grid. Consumer / Pro. Desktop / Portable. “That’s it,” he says. Everything else? Gone. Not optimized. Not restructured. Killed. In one meeting, he cut roughly 70% of the product line. Imagine the room. Years of work. Teams built around those...
2 days ago • 1 min read
Anything that is alive is in a continual state of change and movement. The moment that you rest, thinking that you have attained the level you desire, a part of your mind enters a phase of decay. You lose your hard-earned creativity and others begin to sense it. This is a power and intelligence that must be continually renewed, or it will die ---- Robert Greene If you ever wonder what I’m doing at 10pm in New Zealand, just when I’m writing this email… You’ve got your answer. I said many times...
3 days ago • 1 min read
According to constraint theory, the greatest human bottleneck is attention. Yes. Our attention is our most finite resource. Even more finite and valuable than our time. Now, think about why Meta is so valuable. And Elon wanted X. And so on… Indeed, the quality and depth of our attention determines the quality of our time. Most people’s attention is scattered, tugged, and seemingly never right here and right now. The rich know this well. In the US, the top 1% don’t allow kids to interact with...
4 days ago • 1 min read
Human emotions spread fast. Very fast. Much faster than any virus. If you go to a stadium and the home team is winning, there’s an explosion of joy. The exact opposite happens if they lose at the last minute. It’s contagious. Inevitable. If your little boy takes her first steps, the huge look of surprise and joy on his face will infect you instantly. That’s who we are. It’s our nature. You don’t need a PPP Certificate from the World Bank to understand this. So… If you spend your life watching...
5 days ago • 1 min read
According to the market research company Harris Poll, 52% of people between 16 and 26 wish social media had never been invented. Con dos c0jones. If they are not your clients or employees or colleagues now, they will be very soon. What’s this telling you? Simple. Worry less about technology and much more about experience and understanding. Most people out there are obsessed with how to implement AI, but are incapable of empathizing with their neighbor’s human pain or joy. Don’t stress about...
6 days ago • 1 min read
I’ve never seen anybody truly making anything great just by waiting. Just by not taking action. Just by letting train after train leave the station. Tomorrow. When I finish the next free-course. Or the next certification. Or when I come back from holidays. Or when I have time “in the summer”. Or when I read “that” book. Or else. Pray and wait is a strategy for failure. Or mediocracy. Problems don’t solve magically themselves. Wishes never come true unless you move your a$$. This is true for...
7 days ago • 1 min read
I told you about Horward before. 1982. New York. A young guy joined a company. Not as CEO. Not as strategist. Not as “Head of Vision.” Director of Retail Operations. Exciting, right? Mid-level. Replaceable. Just another guy executing someone else’s plan. The company was called: Starbucks The guy was: Howard Schultz At that time, Starbucks didn’t even sell the “Starbucks experience.” They sold beans. Machines. Coffee equipment. No romance. No Italian fantasy. No global empire. Just beans. But...
8 days ago • 1 min read
Excellent professional. First in coming in. Last in leaving. Sacrificing holidays, family time and even health. Limited recognition. Or not recognition at all. Tried to change career path. “If only you had specific experience”, “It would be great to have it done it before”, “But this is complicated”, “If you had more exposure to clients”, “what’s your commercial experience”. Don’t blame those questions, or the messengers. Fear is logical. In today’s world where you have to cover your @ss at...
9 days ago • 1 min read